CRYSTALLINE GOLD CALCITE SPECIMEN .37 GRAM CALIFORNIA GOLD

Description: CALIFORNIA CRYSTALLINE GOLD SPECIMEN in CALCITE Photos are enlarged representations of offered item. Ruler, if shown, is 1/4" wide (actual size). A U.S. dime (10 cent piece) measures 17.5 mm in diameter. Featured item hails from western U.S.'s California goldfields. Growing from one end of the drusy calcite are spiny clusters of crystalline gold. Collectors accustomed to seeing 'wild gold' (i.e. gold found in the wild) may understand the nature of this beautiful beast. The calcite crystals jumbled together, all part of an aggregated host, must have formed inside a vug. Wedged in between the gold clusters lies another strange metallic growth. It could be pyrite, yet it's darker than that mineral and has a unique columnar habit. It's a rather remarkable specimen, actually. No, you won't get your money's worth in gold, but, as native auriferous (gold-bearing) minerals go... this is way cool! Specimen was found in California's Mother Lode country. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Native gold-calcite from California weighs 5.7 grains - .37 Gram Size - 16.1X9.7X4.3 mm As founder of this store, I actively mined for 18+ years. For thirteen summers, you might find me beneath some gold dredge sucking up gravel. As a nomadic miner, once winter closed her icy grip on the mountains up north, I flew south with my flock of fellow snowbirds. We just figured SW Arizona for a better seasonal climate. Some just like it hot while others don't. Your first question may be, how did I do? Honestly, I didn't break any records. My best seasons saw twenty ounces entering my poke. Even back then, with low spot, I felt rich. In a sense, I was. Just imagine if gold were worth back then what it is today. Of course, every miner hopes to find more, but we rarely do. Most of my production was 'fugitive gold'; stuff the old-timers, for one reason or another, lost or overlooked. Lots of 'yeller' escaped off the end of their sluice boxes. It's obvious 'no man is big enough to get it all." Each and every claim mined brought new adventure and challenges unique to that site. Most properties had been hammered, but if a lead paid a pennyweight a day, I mined it. Every last speck had to be removed from that miserable paystreak. Actually, a pennyweight a day today isn't bad. In lots of mining districts, leasable, minable, or locatable claims are few and far between. If you like an area's history and how it looks, gain legal access to some ground. That way, you can start prospecting, hopefully, without too many hassles. At this phase, one needs to figure out what, if any potential remains. I enjoyed prospecting for new deposits; digging where no one else thought to look. In hindsight, even the failures were fun not to mention educational. As they say "if you enjoy what you're doing, it's not work." The gold contained in my specimens is not pure 24K. Absolutely pure gold is never found in nature. The gold you see in my listings is an alloy of metals created by the dynamic, mysterious forces inside planet earth. It's thought that gold was brought here by impacting asteroids. Considering how the planets in our solar system were formed (i.e. essentially, through the coalescing of meteorites and stardust), this seems plausible. Obviously, lots of cool geological and astronomical stuff can happen in 4.5 billion plus years of cosmic evolution. There are many these days who refute and dispute anything the science community contends. If something sounds implausible, I might question their explanations and understanding myself. One thing I do know. Many of the realities and difficulties associated with finding and digging up gold are unquestionably the same for everyone. For what it's worth, over 12K customers believed in my products enough to become patrons. Not one solitary, soulful item was returned on account of non-authenticity. After doing business here for over twenty years, my customer feedback remains 100% positive. So much time spent actively mining as a dredger, detectorist, and drywasherman imparted a good deal of knowledge on the subject. Dealing with honorable miners, claim and property owners, many all-around decent Joes imparted an ethic of honesty and trying to treat folks right. In the item offered, you will not be getting your money's worth in gold bullion. The value of gold specimens is more as a mineral collectible and curiosity. You are wise to be cautious because "all that glitters is not gold." I have purchased every manner of faux specimen imaginable on this website. Beginning long ago, in a past life maybe, something about the mysterious element, gold, drew me to it. That's another way of saying that from the time I can first remember anything at all, gold, and the hunt for it, was invading my dreams seemingly hard-wired into my DNA. How in heaven's name this came to be is beyond me, but hunting for Au (gold), working with it, and marketing became a life-way. I hope my passion shows. If, like myself, you're a fan of gold, there's a lot to see at G.O.E. Weight Conversions: 15.43 GRAINS = 1 GRAM 31.103 GRAMS = 1 TROY OUNCE 24 GRAINS = 1 PENNYWEIGHT (DWT) 20 DWT = 1 TROY OUNCE 480 GRAINS = 1 TROY OUNCE S & H COMBINED SHIPPING IS OFFERED. ON MULTIPLE PURCHASES, FOR CORRECT AMOUNT, PLEASE REQUEST AN INVOICE FROM THIS SELLER. U.S. BUYERS - S&H $3.50 with tracking included. INTNL. BUYERS - S&H $14.00 shipped via USPS International First Class Mail. PAYMENTS For U.S. buyers: We accept paypal. For intnl. customers: We accept paypal. Pay securely with www.paypal. Payment must be made within 7 days from close of auction. We ship as soon as funds clear. If you have questions, please ask them before bidding. REFUNDS We leave no stones unturned insuring our customers get what they bargained for. If you're not satisfied with this item, contact me. If we can't resolve the problem, you may return item in 'as purchased' condition (within 30 days) for a refund. Exchanges are another option. Let me try to give you a little background describing one of my Arizona claims I mined on a small-scale for about ten years. The gold recovered on it was very unique. Some nuggets were rounded balls of wadded-up wire gold, part of a small, discrete placer which had broken off an outcropping of quartz stringers and lenses (lenticular pockets). The eluvial gold had then fanned out onto a sedimentary pediment. This field had developed beneath a long, upthrust quartzsite ridge. I subsequently tested quartz outcroppings along this ridge for a distance of around 500 meters. Copper and iron mineralization showed up in other chip and float samples taken along the ridge, but wire gold surfaced only at one location; perhaps where a fold occurred in shale and quartzsite country rock. What fascinated me most about the gold was the striking character of the nuggets. I liked it well enough to stake four twenty acre lode claims and later, an association placer. Most pieces were chased, embossed with lines, wrapped into tightly-packed balls of wire. Examining the more bulbous nuggets magnified, you could see some characteristics of Rams Horn wire. Hooked tips were visible on the compacted wiry tentacles. Some nuggets resembled numbers and letters of the alphabet. Considering how close to their source these were being dug, it's hard to imagine erosion and movement caused their deformed character. Many nuggets were locked up in caliche (ancient marine seabed sediment). These had to be broken out of calcium carbonate to release them from the cemented conglomerate. A small pod of that same limy substance remains caked on this nugget. I thought it had been removed thirty years ago. You earn every speck of gold you find pounding caliche with a pickaxe. Makes my body ache thinking about those guys hammering away down in the old La Cholla drift Mine. My claims, in places, also held a clay layer. Below this lay the caliche beds. A guy really had no choice but to break it up with his pickaxe. My claims were in Arizona's Dome Rock Mtns. in La Paz, County. Quartz veins are seldom uniform in richness. Once in a blue moon, someone stumbles onto a pocket of bonanza ore. Some miners specialize in pocket-hunting. Considering the potential prize if you find one, can’t say as I blame them. If you were to trace an exposed quartz vein around some desolate mountainside, a few lenses along that entire span might yield specimen-grade gold. Once erosion removed that pocket of enriched ore from it's source, it could lay hidden in some pediment directly beneath the blowout. Sometimes, detectorists encounter nugget patches ripe for the picking - full of eluvial, crystalline gold. That's basically what I found here. The featured wire gold nugget shows no signs of weathering. It’s a personal find. Enriched pockets of hard rock gold generally 'pinch out', but occasionally, another pocket is encountered if you excavate deeper into the vein. Thanks for checking out my store. I hope you find rich ground ahead. Gold of Eldorado 6-5-12

Price: 45 USD

Location: Banks, Oregon

End Time: 2024-11-20T19:07:03.000Z

Shipping Cost: 3.5 USD